Film Analysis

Annie Hall

Genre

Key Facts

1.

Alvy: “I
would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like
me for a member.”

Alvy delivers this joke directly into
the camera in a stark close-up at the opening scene of the movie,
in the middle of an intimate and humorous monologue. It pays tribute
to key figures in Allen’s life: Groucho Marx, to whom the quote
is usually attributed, and Sigmund Freud, in whose Wit and
Its Relation to the Unconscious the notion originally appeared.
From Marx, Allen learned comedy. From Freud, Allen learned about
the unconscious and its hold on his present actions. This quotation
immediately establishes Alvy’s character as riddled with psychopathological
hang-ups, especially in the realm of romantic relationships, and
sets up the main theme of the film—that love is absurd and in many
ways futile. It also sets up the narrative line of the story, serving
as a springboard into the memory of Alvy’s failed relationship with
Annie, as told in retrospect.

The quotation is reinforced throughout the film as Alvy
jumps back and forth among his various relationships with women.
He avoids sex with his first wife, Allison, because she is willing
and therefore unattractive to him. He constantly mocks the New York intellectuals
who are his peers. He makes fun of his Jewish family and, of course,
makes fun of himself all the time. He also pokes fun at Annie’s
old boyfriends—a group he eventually joins himself. When Annie wants
to make a commitment and moves into his apartment, Alvy pushes her
away, yet he attempts a reconciliation with her after she loses
interest in him and moves on. Alvy realizes he acts out the conflict
articulated in the quotation, but he is unable to stop the pattern
and maintain a healthy, lasting relationship. At the end of the
film, he concludes that such relationships are virtually impossible
and that love itself is absurd.

2.

Alvy: “Boy,
if life were only like this . . .”

Alvy turns to the camera and makes this
remark after he has gleefully pulled media critic Marshall McLuhan
onscreen to tell off the obnoxious loudmouth standing behind him
in the ticket line for the movie The Sorrow and the Pity.
McLuhan tells the man he knows nothing of McLuhan’s work and “how
you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing.”
This clearly fanciful exchange provides a visual demonstration of
the transformative nature of art—one of Annie Hall’s
major themes. Alvy is delighted at his control over the narrative,
as the quotation indicates. However, the line also signals Alvy’s
awareness that, despite his control over his memory and the film’s
storyline, he is helpless to control reality. Within the film, he
can time-travel back to age nine and add interpretive subtitles,
but in real life there are no such benefits. Alvy’s comment indicates
his preference of art over life—a preference that filmmaker Allen
may hold himself.

Alvy frequently employs fantastical techniques to riff
on reality and transform it into his ideal version of what happened
between him and Annie. This comment articulates, with humor, the
regret that Alvy may feel about some of the choices he has made
throughout his life. It also implies that Alvy is more comfortable
within the territory of art than he is in reality. Other scenes
reinforce this idea: Alvy is hesitant to try new things—drugs, trips,
visits to a famous music producer’s hotel room—in most areas of
his life, but he has no qualms about inserting an animated or double-exposed
film into the narrative. Later in the film, while Alvy directs a
rehearsal of a play that revises the fate of his relationship with
Annie, he reiterates this idea of art being preferable to real life
when he says, “You’re always trying to get things to come out perfect
in art because it’s real difficult in life.”

3.

Passerby: “It’s
never something you do. That’s how people are. Love fades.”

A passerby makes this response to Alvy’s
question, “Somewhere, she cooled off to me. Is it something that
I did?” The pedestrian’s answer encourages Alvy to face reality
and chalk up the relationship’s end as natural and inevitable. The
comment suggests that we, as human beings, are helpless to control
what happens to us. Alvy has nothing to do with the cooling of Annie’s
feelings for him: she has just moved on to a different stage in
her life that doesn’t include him. People change. Love fades. This
idea doesn’t make things any easier for Alvy, who seems to want
to pinpoint the exact moment and situation in which Annie’s feelings
tempered. In a sense, it makes things worse, because he is left
at a loss, with no one and nothing to blame for his unhappiness.
The passerby’s remark foreshadows Alvy’s final monologue in the
film, which sums up his feelings about relationships.

4.

Annie: “Alvy,
you’re incapable of enjoying life, you know that? I mean you’re
like New York City. You’re just this person. You’re like this island
unto yourself.”

Annie makes this remark to Alvy at a
sidewalk café in Los Angeles after he flies out in an attempt to
win her back with a desperate marriage proposal. The quotation sums
up Annie’s view of Alvy, whose pessimism has driven her away. She
has no hard feelings toward Alvy and wants to remain friends. In
this conversation, Annie is finally strong and confident enough
to tell Alvy what she really thinks of him, and she compares him
to New York. The comment reinforces the parallel between Alvy and
his home, New York City, but does so in a negative way. The film
has been fiercely loyal to New York until this point, when Annie
turns the tables and suggests that maybe New York is not paradise
after all. Annie also differentiates herself here from Alvy. He
has shaped her in his image in many ways, but this quotation demonstrates
her separating herself from him, and from New York City, for good.
It becomes clear in this moment that they will not get back together
and that their relationship is over for good.

5.

Alvy: “I
thought of that old joke. This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says,
‘Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken.’ And the doctor
says, ‘Well, why don’t you turn him in?’ And the guy says, ‘I would,
but I need the eggs.’ Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I
feel about relationships. They’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd
and . . . but I guess we keep going through it because most of us
need the eggs.”

Alvy turns to the camera and delivers
a final monologue summing up his feelings about his breakup with
Annie and relationships in general. For the past ninety-some minutes,
Alvy has delved into the psychosexual drama of romantic relationships,
trying to figure out the key to making them work. This last remark
is akin to Alvy throwing up his hands. There’s no secret. He gives
up, with the knowledge that however absurd and ridiculous relationships
may be, he still will pursue them. This remark, the last line in
the film aside from Annie’s song “Seems Like Old Times,” is delivered
after Alvy is shown meeting Annie by chance on the street. In the
brief vignette, Alvy turns away with his head down, signifying that
he will always have feelings for Annie and still harbors regret
about their breakup. With this last comment, Alvy concludes that
there was nothing he could do to prevent the breakup. However, the
fact that the relationship ended doesn’t mean his and Annie’s feelings
were any less powerful. He has the “eggs,” the memories of the history
he shared with Annie. The remark and the film itself pay tribute
to those failed relationships that are no less powerful or worthwhile simply
because they did not succeed.